


Wee Valentine

by americanjedi



Series: Wee Doctor [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Glitter, Valentine's Day, bespoke onesies, mention of past suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 17:23:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1558217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/americanjedi/pseuds/americanjedi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Valentine's Day and Sherlock doesn't always know where he stands with Watsons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wee Valentine

**Author's Note:**

> This is a one shot in no particular order. Post Bantam Wars. Glorious un-betaed.

"It’s a baby not a board room member," said a familiar voice and Sherlock turned around to find W’s drunk of a brother helping his eldest nephew pick out baby clothes. The brother Sherlock was supposed to watch after. The brother Sherlock was jealous of for all those moments he never saw.

"Don’t tell me you’re breeding," Sherlock said lowly and Davey jumped to stare at them, looking terribly young before he arranged his face again. Then John was leaning forward on his heels until Sherlock nodded to let him go and hug his uncle. Didn’t react to the aching worry that popped up at the empty space where John’s body heat was supposed to be. Something in Tim’s face went soft and kind and sad as his arms went around John’s shoulders and squeezed him with one of those rough boyish hugs that made John laugh as his feet left the ground. It was harder now with John into his first growth spurt, nearly up to Tim’s sternum.  
Sherlock looked away.

"What are you two doing here?" John’s smile glowed evident in his voice, a small woolen sun.

"Present for the Cubbit baby," said Tim. He had the spirit about him of one who had been called to a suicide squad but was choosing to make the best of it as he went.

"Hilton wants to take the ladies out for a Valentine’s thing, so I’ve been deployed to find a pink girl thing to match Elsie’s other girls." He had a weary anguished acceptance of a man on a death march and odd specks of glitter in his otherwise immaculate suit. Both hands were occupied with dresses that he shook in the air, letting them rustle dramatically for him.

"Not having luck with pink girl things?" John grinned up at his brother.

Davey just made a face back.

"Do you want to come tease Davey mercilessly? I can only do so much without him trying to harvest my kidneys. And I’m lost enough in this mess of three hundred pound baby dresses." Tim’s hands rested on his nephew’s shoulders easily, warm and compact as he was. They matched, stocky and small.

Sherlock didn’t take a deep breath, didn’t change his features.

"No, Sherlock and I are on a really important case. We think someone has been selling babies. He found this bespoke baby snappy-ony-thing and we’re trying to find out what shop made it. He narrowed it down to this street, it was brilliant. We should probably go. The baby’s secure for now, but no point wasting time."

Tim squeezed John extra hard, “You let me know if you need me to pick you up.”

"Tim," John groaned, full of beleaguered affection. It was one of the few times John actually sounded his age. It forestalled any comment, that Sherlock could do with as little of Tim picking John up as possible. There were days still, even after all the time that’s slipped between his fingers like little golden fish, that Sherlock felt floating, disconnected. An actor on a stage dropping props, missing cues, stumbling past his mark. It seemed like a past life since he knelt so grateful, so grateful, that John had been there, that after that horrible thing, the thing they didn’t talk about. That John was there curled up in his chair, back with Sherlock. 

Davey bent down as soon as John was released to plant a kiss on the boy’s forehead that was too awkward and too full of teeth. “Beware the coming of Roost. He’s very excited for Valentine’s day.”

"I’ll keep an eye out," John nodded, before running like a puppy back to Sherlock. His face, while not so little anymore, was still dear enough make something in Sherlock’s chest cavity ping when it rearranged into seriousness. "Let’s go Sherlock." 

So Sherlock put one hand at the base of his neck and directed him to the service desk. Finding the seamstress was easy enough work, there was about as much of a demand for bespoke onesies that one might think. It took a moment of shamming and flashing Lestrade’s badge for them to pull out the account book. And explaining away John as a witness in protective custody. This led them to a desperate housemaid and her complicated relationship with her married employer and a flat in Whitechapel where DI Gregson was waiting for them to prepare the raid. Even John who had a compulsion to stand in awe of every female person he came in contact with, had kept it brief on their way to find the infant.

They were at the corner, standing there, Sherlock’s hand on John’s shoulder and John leaning into him, when Sherlock began to consider this wasn’t the place for John considering his background. The background he would never talk about, but the background Sherlock should never forget. He knew John would go in with him without Sherlock asking, that John would triage. That John would see. W had seen everything, he had stood and looked down at Sherlock as if he were the only solid ground in a sea of swampland, he had said he was so tired. Looked like a ghost, holding on to haunt Sherlock’s phone. John should never look like that.

Sherlock didn’t think he would ever let go of that memory. Never release it from where it was clenched next to his heart, second only to W alive, to every line of W’s weary tortured body screaming please, please, please to Sherlock. Asking for comfort and somehow being comforted. He had given that to W. W had wanted that from him. They were friends. Sherlock would always treasure that like the set of W’s clothes he had nicked and sometimes lead out on the bed and talked to and considered as if W was just in the other room, in the bathroom, getting ready and if Sherlock didn’t open the door W could still be there. Right on the other side. And if that’s not right, if that’s strange for Sherlock to do, if it’s wrong, well W was not right in a lot of ways - was broken like Sherlock. And here was John, a small W stitched together with sutures, wool, and tea leaves for stuffing. Not quite broken yet, not all the way. W put Sherlock’s hand at his throat, around his heart, Sherlock wouldn’t squeeze.

He loved John. John was a dear thing to him.

He was brave enough to whisper that quietly to himself.

But Roost appeared as Roost tended to do unexpectedly, but with the addition of being in a cloud of glitter and paper hearts clinging to his hair, his temple. Who knows how he got behind the police lines, although this was Roost, it was fully possible he climbed up from the sewer or parachuted down. He looked at Sherlock in that way he somehow had, as if he was only half as mad as he shammed, and smoothed down John’s hair with an artist’s fingers. He’d probably be excellent at the violin. “My dear Watson,” he crooned affectionately, as one might to a baby, but John didn’t demure. “Are you about your business?” he asked Sherlock, but before he could answer smiled and answered for himself. “Tailors, Scotland Yard, the pub by Regent’s, pretended to eat from John’s fish and chips, didn’t, baby smuggling. No Davey would have killed them, he is strange about babies. Strange, dangerous, and lovely. Baby selling. Desperate people. Hmm. Johnny come away with me.”

John placed his hands over Roost’s where they had fallen to rest on his cheeks. “I have to help.” 

Roost blinked down at him, surprised. "Help me. Delivery. Necessity. Necropathy. Agency." He sighed. "I’m delivering Valentine’s." He caught Sherlock’s eye, and no, Roost wasn’t a pinch as mad as he shammed.

"Go on," Sherlock told him. "Even I won’t have that much to do."

"Well," John wavered.

"My dear John. The game’s afoot. A heart. The fleeting hart."

"Alright," John replied, the fight seeming to go out of him. 

Roost smiled and slipped an origami rose red like blood on the outside and white as snow in the center into Sherlock’s button hole. “An abundance of love to you,” Roost smiled, “Sherlock Holmes, happy Valentine’s.” His narrow fingertips hovered there on his lapel. The boy stood an inch or two shorter than Sherlock, although his voice flittered surprisingly high and flighty. Fondness cozied up in the corner of his eyes.

Sherlock wasn’t sure if it was a statement of fact or a blessing for the future. He smiled anyway, letting out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding and said, “you too,” anyway.


End file.
